I have been hanging out with people who don't watch the news and they are keeping me sane in this mad mad world
I have been spending time with people who do not really watch the news, not because they are trying to make a statement, but because they simply do not have the time or the mental space for it. They are locals, underprivileged, working long hours, thinking about daily wages, food, electricity, and whether tomorrow will be manageable. And somewhere in the middle of all this, they laugh.
What unsettles me is how much their presence has anchored me.
I'm using the word innocence carefully here. It is not stupidity, and it is not indifference. It is the distance from the constant stream of catastrophe that fills my phone before I have even gotten out of my bed. My mornings often begin with headlines that pull at urgency. A war somewhere. A moral collapse somewhere else. A crisis framed in a way that asks for my reaction.
Their mornings begin with different questions. Is there work today? Did it rain? How much are tomatoes selling for? Who in the neighbourhood is unwell? The scale is smaller, but the stakes are not.
When I sit with them, conversation stays close to the ground. Someone's child struggling in school. A wedding being planned with their earned money. A persistent backache. A price of cooking gas going up. There is no constant switching between global tragedies, no need to have an opinion on everything unfolding across continents. Their lives stay close to what is in front of them.
I cannot ignore what happens inside my own body when I am constantly being exposed to news that keeps the threat system slightly switched on. The nervous system does not distinguish well between danger in the room and danger on a screen. Repeated exposure to alarming information can keep us in low-grade activation, which over time starts to feel normal. We begin to believe that being tense means we are informed, and that being informed means we are responsible.
Spending time with people who are underprivileged has unsettled my assumptions about engagement and morality. They are not indifferent to suffering. Hardship is not abstract for them. Structural inequality is not a theory. It shapes their days. Yet they do not emotionally inhabit every global disaster. Their energy is directed toward what is within reach, what can be acted upon, what will directly affect tonight's meal or tomorrow's commute. There is something honest about that prioritisation.
I notice the guilt that creeps up on me when I feel lighter around them, as though peace were a betrayal of awareness. There is a subtle script that equates anxiety with empathy, as if the depth of our care must be measured by the heaviness we carry. "If we are not constantly disturbed, are we even paying attention?"
However, I keep returning to a simple question. What is the amount of reality a human nervous system can process without wearing down?
There is a difference between awareness and absorption, between staying informed and becoming engulfed. The modern information environment collapses distance. It invites us to hold multiple crises at once, to carry grief from one continent, while arguing about policy from another, all within the same hour. We call this being informed, but sometimes it feels like overload disguised as responsibility.
I am not romanticising poverty. Their lives are not easier, and a lack of access to information can also mean a lack of access to power. I do not want to turn their circumstances into something poetic. At the same time, I cannot ignore the grounding effect of their closeness to what is immediate. They are not living in several timelines at once. They are living in this hour, this street, this conversation.
And in their presence, something in me softens.
Perhaps some of our collective instability is not only about what is happening in the world, but about how much of it we try to carry at once, how deeply distant chaos enters our inner life. Maybe sanity is less about knowing everything and more about recognising what we can meaningfully engage with, what we can influence, and what we must set down.
Although, I do not have a neat conclusion, I am still trying to find the balance. I do not want to retreat into impassiveness, nor do I want to live in constant activation. I want to care without burning out, to remain aware without being consumed, to choose when to open myself to the world's noise and when to step back.
For now, I am grateful for the reminder that it is possible to be present without being overwhelmed. That laughter can exist without a headline behind it. That not every moment has to be filtered through a global lens.
Maybe this is not ignorance. Maybe it is lived wisdom we forgot.